What I hate about Apple.

I’ve used apple products for years and today own an iPhone X as my primary mobile device. I’ve gone through phases of liking apple to mostly hating all of their products today with the exception of the iPhone. Overall my view of Apple is largely negative, which is fine since there are tons of other PCs I can buy. Yet, for phones I wish there was a better alternative and I’m not talking about Android.

Despite my dislike for Apple I still prefer the iPhone to all the Android offerings I’ve tried. I plan to try a few vanilla Android phones soon, we’ll see. My last Android phone was a Samsung S8 and it was an absolutely horrible experience for a multitude of reasons I won’t get into in this article. It lasted about two months before I broke down and bought an iPhone X.

So why do I hate apple?

The Users – Perhaps the worst thing about using an Apple product is other Apple users. These are some of the worst people in the world. I feel the same way about BMW owners, love the cars, hate the people. The majority of Apple and BMW owners have at best superficial knowledge of the product they use. Advanced users in both groups are far and few.

Both BMW and Apple owners seem to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect where they believe they’re actually very knowledgeable. Furthermore both groups are incredibly vocal. As a result it’s almost impossible to have an online discussion with BMW owners or Apple owners. Any question about doing anything the gods at Apple haven’t thought of is met with derision and hostility. The masses of fanboys show up to state you shouldn’t do whatever it is you asked about. I’ll simulate the average Apple Discussions conversation:

OP: “Hey guys, just got an iPhone X, is there any way I can make my _____ do _____?”

Poster 1: “Why would you wanna do _____? If apple wanted your iPhone X to do ____ they’d have done it that way.”

OP: “Well I really want my iPhone to do ____ because of _____. I understand that ____ isn’t the normal way ____ is done, but maybe someone has figured it out and could help with my question?”

Poster 2: “If you don’t like how ____ does ___ you should go tell Apple.”

Poster 1: “Apple designed ___ because everyone knows that’s how you use ____ and you’re just doing it wrong. Only idiots think that doing ______ would be a good idea.”

Why do these people even bother to reply? This kind of douchebaggery is the reason I hate other Apple users. Unfortunately I’m reminded of it whenever I Google something I want my iPhone to do and see links to Apple Discussions. Almost every single post is this kind of cancer and poor OP almost never gets any help.

Proprietary Cables – Just switch to USB-C already and be done with it, what the fuck are you guys thinking? It’s not like I or even die hard apple fanboys buy your OEM cables. They’re coming from mainland China through Amazon.

Terrible for Developers – Making an app? You pretty much have to make an IOS version, because that’s a huge market to leave out. It costs $100 / year vs. Google’s $25 one time fee. You might be saying to yourself, “damn $100 a year is pricey!”, but it’s not! What’s really expensive is that you are required to buy a Mac-something computer since you can only compile iPhone Apps via Xcode in MacOS. Enjoy that fucked out shit show.

Outdated PC Hardware – Yes I said PC. Macs are PCs now, it’s all the same hardware and CPUs as any other PC you buy. You can run Linux, Windows, MacOS all on the same box. But that’s not the point. The point is that Apple’s PC hardware situation is getting completely out of hand. I liked the MacBook Pro and the MacPro half a decade ago, but today it’s just a joke. They’re still selling the pile of crap Mac Pro that came out in 2013 for as high as $4,000 even though the hardware is old Xeon CPUs and DDR3 memory. Yes DDR3, in 2018, in a $4,000 computer.

The laptops and all-in-ones aren’t usually horribly outdated, but are still a massive premium over the competition. Remember these are the same kind of Intel based boxes, they’re all just PCs. As I mentioned above, if you’re an iPhone app developer you have to have MacOS. Can MacOS run on any other PC? Of course it can and people do it all the time. It can even run in a virtual machine on any Windows PC. Unfortunately that’s a violation of the MacOS EULA. So if you’re a legit developer you’re stuck with their overpriced trash.

I guess this is how you become a trillion dollar market cap company. Good for them, and I’m still a sucker using their iPhones. However, we need a new player in the mobile market. So far Microsoft’s attempt at doing phones is like the dumb kid in the class raising his hand. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong. Here’s to hoping!